D&D Players, What do DMs do that you hate?

[@facetankhank]

I am a DM and I came here to study

[@ZombieDireWolf]

you could also search tips for DMing there are a few good videos on YT about it.

[@dakotamcdonnell6680]

Same

[@facetankhank]

@@ZombieDireWolf Brother, I do hope you are trolling, as I am not serious.

[@gamerguy9961]

Same

[@robertheinrich2994]

dumb people don't learn from their mistakes intelligent people learn from their mistakes wise people learn from mistakes of others great, that you chose to be wise.

[@tennagon3822]

Telling the players what their characters are doing/thinking. The GM gets the innkeeper, the bandits, the wolves, the damsel, the shopkeep, the goblins, the king and all the king's horses and all the king's men. The players each get ONE character. Let them decide what their character is doing/thinking.

[@diegonunez3492]

From a dms perspective it really helps with RP

[@Choujeen]

What if they roll for sense motive?

[@tennagon3822]

@@diegonunez3492 by... doing both halves?

[@tennagon3822]

@@Choujeen sense motive is different from "you like/dislike this npc because you're supposed to."

[@karenmiles4431]

Telling players what their character is feeling, thinking, or doing should be limited to specific situations. For example; Passive Skills: "You get a sense of being watched". Phrases such as this are a clue that something is going on. It allows an opportunity to RP, utilizes skills that have been invested in, and can build suspense. Backstory: "You know this person is lying". Phrases such as this allows a DM to speak to a character's familiarity with an NPC, an institution, or even knowledge of some aspect of the world. Mechanics: "You feel the magic take hold of your body and render you frozen". Phrases such as this may be necessary to describe the effects of magic, poison, and conditions in order to establish certain mechanics. There are some situation in which a DM might have to speak to a character's specific thoughts, feeling, or actions. It should be done carefully, and with the ultimate goal of not stealing player agency.

[@nathangerber1547]

I hate when the DM doesn't go to bed on time the night before and then he (me) is dying all session.

[@leewilliams5342]

Maybe that's because he had real life issues while trying to create your game.

[@nathangerber1547]

He understands that sleeping will reduce his real life problems too, but he’s not good at making himself do it.

[@nathangerber1547]

I’m the dm btw, I was referring to myself in the third person for the joke. Can’t tell if you got it and are making me feel less bad about myself or if you are defending the person you think I’m picking on. I just realized those aren’t mutually exclusive.

[@FiksIIanzO]

​@@nathangerber1547 This was not particularly clear. We don't know if you are a DM if you don't tell us that and I'm definitely assuming genuine grievance over self-depreciating jokes from a stranger if it's not clear which one it is

[@Yarradras]

​@@nathangerber1547hey buddy, your joke was clear to me and I could relate 😊

[@DHTheAlaskan]

Bully players they dont want at the campaing but didn't have enough repsect to tell the player that they weren't welcome in the first place.

[@leonelegender]

Nice, I will do that myself

[@DHTheAlaskan]

@@leonelegender no, don't do that. That would make you an asshole.

[@Aeivious]

basically happened to me. DM wouldn't let me use the tools my ranger had to solve obstacles. threw my character in prision for impersonating a towns folk to seem unsuspicious (fair), but then the rest of the party rolls in and threatens the QUEEN with a knife to her face, and they get to walk away scott free. So, didn't play after that.

[@Manicies]

As a DM, I gotta say...don't be afraid to compromise with your players, and have discussions with them. Nothing sucks more as a player than interpreting something differently to the DM, but the DM doesn't seem to care about how you understood it at all, and flatly says "you're wrong and I'm not going along with that", even if you banked a lot of your character/actions on that. In a session just yesterday, I had a player try to use Plant Growth indoors, not having realised that the spell specifies "all normal plants in the area become overgrown", rather than "it grows plants in the area". I let him know where that misunderstanding had come from, but since he'd clearly had a plan in mind, I told him that, because it wasn't his fault, I would let the spell work the way he'd intended this time, but now that it was clarified, he wouldn't be able to do that again. He later stated he REALLY appreciated that I worked with him to let his plan work rather than shutting him down completely, and he super understood why I said it wouldn't work that way again. He was really cool about it, and discussing and compromising to get him what he wanted rather than just hard shutting him down like "nope that's stupid" would've just made him upset and bitter, and it wouldn't have felt very good on my end either. We're both there to have fun - as a DM, make sure you remember that.

[@Allantitan]

He might have confused it with druidcraft. I just looked it up and that was the closest thing to what he wanted to do that I could find though I could be wrong since it is 1:40 am rn

[@mal2ksc]

Unless there's some specific reason otherwise, you could also have handwaved some plants into existence for the player to cause to become overgrown. Potted plants hanging from a chain, or a little shrub in a bucket on the windowsill, that's all it takes to act as a seed for the overgrowth.

[@chukyuniqul]

Really depends on the context, I could have just as well asked for his objective and then offered an alternative. Admittedly usually I expect of and trust my players to know their characters, skills and abilities because I find no reason to learn every bit and bob. Additionally, I usually have a pretty good ability to bring pieces in the scene so aspects make sense. In your case, I would have probably went "it takes you a bit longer as you feel around for plants to bolster, and although it is a great effort you manage to bring up some of the potted plants on the windowsill and hanging off the rafters into the spells effect", which I would expect of them to realize "ok so it may not always work, gotta be mindful of vegetation". And people tend to do.

[@jedwell9531]

That's generally the way to go, yeah. A while ago I in a pf 1e game, I had a player trying to get up a stone cliff to reach a group of archers shooting at them. He opted to use a racial ability to transform into a lesser earth elemental and get up there with a burrow speed. He didn't know those work in soft soil, only (If you don't have earthglide) Just let him get up there that time and gave a headsup for the future, no harm done.

[@kennethsprouse77]

Always encourage outside the box thinking. Sure they're in a house. The plants / roots crawl, snake and burst through the floorboards.

[@claude-alexandretrudeau1830]

"The only exception is in the middle of a long combat." No, that's the perfect way to introduce a new PC. How could you get a more badass introduction than in the middle of a fight?

[@Allantitan]

I can see that working actually especially if one of the others is about to go down just to be saved from the new pc

[@born8541]

@@Allantitan That's one option. Another one I tried is, that the new Player was stuffed in a crate and managed to get out of it while the fight was ongoing. So there's immediately a hook to have some deeper introductions between the players. Of course all ways to introduce depend on having a chat with the new player if he would like this or that, so that you figure it out with each other.

[@lucielm]

My previous DMs had people roll on mundane things like cooking, reading, or even having to grow proficient in said skills. One player failed to read so often he stopped trying to read.

[@ryanfladung8490]

I’d say making your players abilities useless is my biggest pet peeve. So my former dm ran a pathfinder game where we were essentially exploring vaults and cracking them open to find old / awesome magical items. When this game was explained I was told cursed items would exist. I shot my dps in the foot and played an investigator whose archetype was an antiquerion. Essentially I could explore and search areas by taking 20 on a perception check in a minute. And I had resistances to curses / cursed items. In addition my spell list was all focused on finding hidden treasures and preventing traps. I was a highly dedicated rogue type. In the entire campaign up to level 13 all my class abilities never came up. It was so bad: I asked a wish granting genie to change my freaking class because I felt useless. In addition each vault would have a themed boss which was puzzle based. Some of these would be immune to magic entirely ( our whole party was casters) or the puzzle caused major issues with saves that our squishy bodies weren’t built for. I eventually swapped to enlightened scholar for my class.

[@Allantitan]

Yeah that sounds like a nightmare regardless of class

[@FiksIIanzO]

Good thing he's a former DM of yours. A good DM steers the story towards making the characters useful. Too many DMs just read you a book or give you their fanfiction of your characters instead of your story.

[@mwhearn1]

Every session, I work out which character hasn't been in the spot light for a while & set up the story so there is a reason why the other players are temporarily nurfed & why the chosen player is buffed. My favourite is finding out a language only the chosen player knows. Find out some nasties that speak that language. Bingo, that player is the star.

[@wolfstarchaser]

I had a GM do this to me in a GURPS? (it was about 30 years ago). My character was designed from the start to be powered armor infantry (think Battletech Elemental, but less individually OP and not genetically engineered supersoldier). The GM knew I was going for this from the start. I never even saw a set of power armor.

[@ryanfladung8490]

The fact I used a wish to change my class because it was never relevant still boggles my brain

[@ChuckUFarley90]

One campaign I was in, I played a Conjuration Wizard. The character was successful enough as an Adventurer to acquire 3 Rare (and rather pricey) Spell Tomes: An Atlas of Endless Horizons A Planecaller's Codex And a (+2) Arcane Grimoire Things weren't going that bad at first, until we went to a Desert region for a quest. At which point, we kept drawing the attention of huge Sandworms. Turns out, they're drawn to magic, specifically my Spell Tomes. What's worse, if these Sandworms swallow you, all your equipment had to made a saving throw or be destroyed by stomach acid. Including your magical gear. Armor & Weapons got a bonus to the save because they were naturally more durable, but other stuff (like MY SPELL TOMES) did not. I got lucky, and avoided getting swallowed. My Tomes were safe. The 6,000 Gold's worth of shiny jewelry on our Rogue, however, did not survive. I chalked it up to a unique feature of a unique monster, and moved on. Then we got to the hidden valley home of a Sphinx, and had to fight a horde of mummified undead. A mix of warriors & casters, not too unreasonable. . . . until one invisible bastard, a rogue-type undead, tried to backstab me. Then he used a Bonus Action to hit me with a magical spray of Acid . . . which forced a saving throw for each of my Tomes, which would destroy them on a failure. . . . um, what? I used inspiration to avoid losing my Tomes. Then I used my Conjuration Wizard features to teleport away from this bastard, because screw that nonsense. . . . THEN THE SOMBITCH TELEPORTED AFTER ME. THEN CAME THE ACID, ROLL SAVES FOR THE TOMES. I got VERY lucky, rolled no failures. I teleported again back to my comrades, who ambushed it when it teleported after me, stopping it before it could spray Acid again. The DM was quite proud of this creature, saying he created a "custom feat" to allow for the acid spray. I asked him to stop trying to destroy our Magic Items, but he flatly refused, saying "That happened ALL THE TIME in the older editions, you just learned to live with it." I should just get better. Fine. Whatever. I had a plan. After talking to the Sphinx, we went to some mountains bordering the Desert. We had to locate a hive of large Beetles, and procure a larva. Seemed simple enough. . . . until we saw the Beetles. Picture a Beetle the size of a Rhinoceros. Give it roughly 90 - 100 HP. Put it in a group of about 3 or 4 other Beetles. Now give it 100 feet of movement per round. Definitely strong, but we made plans and laid a trap. We tilted the field to our advantage as best as we could, even setting up a Tiny Hut as a safe refuge if it all went sideways . . . which, of course, it did. Turns out, these Beetles can teleport themselves and one friendly creature as a bonus action (we couldn't find a range on that) also they could do that every single damn round. Also, get this: THEY SPEW ACID AS A BREATH WEAPON, ROLL A SAVE FOR YOUR GEAR & MAGIC ITEMS. Oh, and DID I MENTION WE WERE ONLY LEVEL 6?!?! I had refused to put myself (remember, Wizard) or my Tomes in jeopardy again. So I was hiding in the Tiny Hut while using summoned creatures from Tasha's to run out of the Hut and fight for me. Let me tell you something: trying to fight as a Wizard & support your allies from inside a Tiny Hut you can't leave is NOT EASY OR FUN. But that was the ONLY way keep my VERY EXPENSIVE Magic Items from being destroyed. I brought this up to the DM, told him that I DON'T WANT to be the guy who cowers in a Tiny Hut when initiative is rolled. I hate doing that, it's not fun for me or fair to my Party, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OR DESTROY OUR STUFF. He reiterated that older editions did this ALL THE TIME, that it would KEEP happening, and nothing I said or did was going to stop it. . . . and that's when I had enough.

[@Starfloofle]

*man.* what a bitch of a DM. Destroying the party's hard-earned loot, ESPECIALLY a wizard's, is a real dick move that should only *ever* be reserved for when it would be supremely narratively impactful. ESPECIALLY after the player comes up with clever ways to avoid it happening, EVEN MORE SO when the player tells you *to your face* "Stop doing that." If anything *I'd* give you a feature that gives you advantage on saves against acid damage after you saved so well against it LOL

[@Shadow-the-scribbler]

That's so stupid, if he didn't want you to have those items then why the fuck did he give them out in the first place???

[@calebdavidson3786]

If your DM wasn't after the stuff he gave you the entire time, that sounds like it would've been a great adventure.

[@DronePunkGAME]

And then you killed him for real

[@KalijahAnderson]

I had a DM try to do something similar. I was an enchanter in that game, so I enchanted some wax with acid resistance, and made all the skill checks needed to get the best outcome. The wax turned out to be acid proof and wasn't any more ignitable than leather. I infused all our acid vulnerable gear in the wax. The DM didn't see this coming until I started the skill checks. When he saw me get the best outcome, he was pissed that I crafted a way around his (twice every session) attempt to destroy our stuff. To his credit, he didn't alter anything in his game to get around the solution. He actually let the solution work. But every time we got to ignore his acid, we saw it east at him and his visible frustration was sweet to see. I swear the guy was a lawful evil DM. Do anything he can plan to make things hard. But won't change the rules of his game of the players get inventive.

[@ZombieDireWolf]

The first thing i learned before being a DM WAS never put significant or plot progressing info behind rolls [thanks to Robert Heartly] him and watching Viva's D&D show where the player Ben rolls very horribly quite often

[@lucifersatan8240]

I put significant info behind a difficult check because I hadn't planned for the check to exist. They where going to find out later but a player wanted to try to recognise someone and it was a historical figure so I had to let him but made the check difficult. He got a nat 20.

[@lucifersatan8240]

I also want to clarify, he almost prevented the inciting incident of the entire campaign by doing so. He almost sidestepped my campaign.

[@tylerian4648]

Another option is to have multiple routes to the plot info with the difficult checks acting more like shortcuts.

[@ZombieDireWolf]

@@tylerian4648 true

[@CompetentConquest]

I mostly agree with this, however if it’s a skill check OR a side quest it can be cool. Like “you need to decipher this script, if you fail you’re going to need to find someone to help, that you trust” and that can lead them to building connections in the region, or fun RP of trying to get the information or help they need without giving up the whole puzzle

[@christianmcnally4323]

Asking for a recap them immediately doing a second recap

[@kiarastardust]

I had a dm who would put fucking op DMPCs in the campaigns he did that was meant to humiliate the party. He was so fucking proud of them and would insert at least one into every campaign. He would get pissed when we managed to beat them. He once tried to kill off the whole party just to "Progress the story". In reality me and the rouge had kicked the crap out of his DMPC the previous session and he was pissed. It was a simple use of good teamwork with me basically deflecting all hits with a shield and the rouge using my shield as cover for sneak attack damage. We managed to escape his bullshit and he just canceled the campaign, We got fed up when he started openly bullying one of the other players at the table and a large group of us left and blocked him.

[@martincampbell4211]

A GM used a fumble table for half a campaign. He agreed it was stupid when the fire giant king crit fumbled himself and trivialised the encounter 😂

[@kylethomas9130]

10:36 - 13:09 Valuable tip. If it only makes sense for the party to achieve something with a single check, have all of them roll, then count either the highest or lowest roll as the mandatory success needed. Even if the highest roll is below average, you can flavor it in a way that makes sense for that character to overcome their shortcomings to achieve the goal. Conversely you may feel the lowest roll may be more authentic. Granting the character a kind of failing forward comedic moment. Both options I'd recommend allowing your players to rp the way their character accomplishes a brief description of the task, especially since a low roll success may come off as mean or rude if played off poorly.

[@leonelegender]

What a way to halt the game making everyone roll for every single thing

[@kylethomas9130]

@@leonelegender that would be stupid to roll for everything, why would you even suggest that?

[@eggs8021]

​@leonelegender where was it implied you do this for everything? Well done making up an idea and epically owning it

[@TamTroll]

it's a very minor thing, still love my DM and players, but for me it's taking a serious / dramatic RP moment, and making it into something silly. My character was sad, she just realized she'd lost her home, the only thing she got back was a doll given to her from her mother (which she had to pay for to get back iirc), and everything else to her name fit in a single lockbox. In a moment of weakness, i had her take everything she considered "Hers", and bring it with her into her bed, taking a sad moment to say "Everything that is irrefutably mine... is in this bed." Real moment of reflection kind of thing, realizing that she has next to nothing that belongs to her anymore. "Shut up! We're trying to sleep!" says an NPC in response... Seriously man? I'm trying to be sad here, uncalled for.

[@legendnodensetsu8423]

On top of that, when players are being dicks for the lolz and the DM allows it. You have a prized possession, family heirloom, etc. and one player think it's funny to destroy or steal it? Okay the player finds it funny in the moment, but would their character actually do it? Please DMs, don't be scared to say no if "comedy" comes to the detriment of a player's fun. In this example, it's funny for one player for 5 minutes at most, but the really important item is lost forever to another player, and then you gotta deal with potential griefing.

[@isaacbatgamer9958]

​@@legendnodensetsu8423as someone who deribaletly has bern fighting with another pc (it all started when he threw a GRENADE at a crocodile near ALL OF US on LEVEL 1 and almoast killed my pet rat and my friend ( we were complete strangers to each other)) is it fair to say that in response to this happening a character who values his friends life more than a strangers life and is willing to kill potential threat Would in response point a gun at the person and say "dont do that ever again" or is that being unreasonable

[@tyrrollins]

I think this is a result of a lot of players being fundamentally uncomfortable with rping serious emotional scenes. I put some blame on the MCU which confuses humor for dramatic conflict and it's the thing now.

[@tomcaniff6437]

this is why I do not care for nat 1's in any of my campaigns, it's just such an immersion breaking joke. I'm not going to watch your trained professionals fail at the most basic level to do their jobs because the dice said so. That's fucking nonsense.

[@TamTroll]

@@tomcaniff6437 a good compromise is to make the failure a result of something outside the character's control. The sun got in their eyes, the enemy lifted their shield and shoved them away, the handle was greasy and slipped out of their hand, etc.

[@jonathancarlson6127]

I don't mind being railroaded entirely, because there is a main plot to follow, but some sessions we were on the D&D equivalent of a haunted mansion ride. Lots of awesome stuff to see, nice environment, and we were just watching invulnerable NPCs do all the action before being swooped out to the next scene. Hate that. Just say you didn't prepare anything and we'll have a one-shot or someone will guest DM.

[@Allantitan]

Heck my dm I think has a backlog of modules for both that reason and for if we’re down a player. Especially if we were going on a quest to get something that pc could use but is useless to the rest of us

[@stevenmike1878]

if its a one shot then its is automatically a railroad and that's preferable. but if a campaign is a railroaded then its a terrible campaign. if you put sandbox elements into a oneshot then it turns into a short multi-session module.

[@dragonriderabens9761]

I disagree with the idea that nat 1s on skill checks result in the character losing all their skill Rather, shit happens that is completely outside their control and THAT is what is causing them to fail. The fighter with a +11 to athletics is trying to leap over a chasm? The rocks tumble beneath your feet right as you’re about to leap Thankfully, you quickly manage to catch yourself and pull yourself back up This gives both the nat 1 failure to show that it’s just bad luck while also giving that skill a chance to shine. As far as skill checks being required for plot progression, well, this has a rather simple solution No one passes? Person with the lowest roll fumbles somehow and gets the info you need out of that fumble. Task failed successfully! Everyone laughs and the plot progresses Making a critical fumble system is easy Making a critical fumble table that is fun and doesn’t impede the game while still feeling tangible is hard. But if you CAN do it…I fully believe you should give it a chance

[@Allantitan]

I know my dm will occasionally let us “take 20” which basically means if it’s something that we might fail at but is plot relevant he will basically say our character takes their time to figure it out. Especially if we’re low on resources

[@vibinglurker5872]

So... you still agree nat 1s shouldn't be auto-fails that disregard skill modifiers

[@Aquabzs]

@@vibinglurker5872 It isn't that, with this they failed cause of stuff *completely* out of there control but don't fall into the Chasm like a fool cause they have the prowess to catch themself

[@slipstream5762]

​@@AquabzsBut if they cross the chasm then they actually passed? On a failure?

[@Aquabzs]

@@slipstream5762 I think what they and what I mean is that it's on the side they are on the crumbles but doesn't fall cause they are skillful enough not to

[@TheKiddJ2Strong]

I have an online group i play with, and the thing that makes me so ANGRY is that he plays video games while he dm's with one of our players. We've had so many games derail because he will get to saying something only for the other player to say something about the game, and now, I and the other players have to wait SOOOOO long to play. I've talked to them about this in private, but the alway give me the same excuse "This is the only time we get to play together." Which is a lie. They both hang out every day and play the same game. It's gotten to the point that I and the rest of the party just left the game without warning. He sent out a group message saying, "Where is everybody? Game time." I had to then spend over 2 hours explaining to him they we wanted to play DnD and not just listen to you and the other player play video games. But the good news is that now im Dming the group, and we are just about to finish up a 3 year-long game!

[@byronlee8745]

One of the things a couple of DMs did that I really hate was keeping only one Initiative throughout the entire game and never re-rolling initiative at the beginning of every battle. I do what I can to tolerate it. To me, having a random initiative in every battle is more fair to the players.

[@YoshiTheWise]

DMs who love when other DMs are flexible and creative but when they’re the DM they’re a RAW Yahtzee.

[@oliverwilhelm6171]

Little late, but. When every NPC is rude for no gosh darn reason, even when the PC’s are the only ones willing and able to help fix the problems. Even after the problems are fixed, not a single word of gratitude. At this point, no, I don’t care if the dragon is burning down the combination orphanage/kitten adoption agency, if the NPC is treating the whole party like they’re idiots for asking questions like “what color is the dragon?” then the NPC can deal it themselves.

[@randus7053]

Okay Fireball and Lightning bolt are really 4th level spells in 5e, which are available as 3rd level spells because of 2 reasons 1: Older Editions had the higher damage so tradition 2: These spells can hurt allies fairly easily.

[@matissequaylepetit7592]

10:18 a good tip I've found if you think combat is running a little long. when the party kills the boss or the strongest enemy in a horde, have the person who dealt the killing blow roll intimidation. If they roll high, the minions are terrified and flee

[@turtleinvader2982]

Expanding on this, they might fight on with less cohesion. For example, killing a necromancer won't scare zombies but they might start fighting at random and won't be doing things such as preparing flanks, targeting weak foes, etc.

[@crassiewassie8354]

I wouldn’t do the roll. If it fails you’ve lost the oppurtunity to end the combat early. The real solution tho to slow combat is to make combat dynamic and tactical.

[@camwyn256]

One thing, as a DM, that I would do that my players hated was randomly rolling dice behind the screen and saying nothing. These dice rolls are often for nothing

[@Riley_Mundt]

Keeps them on their toes. I do it from time to time and have to stop myself from smiling when they all stop and look at me.

[@mal2ksc]

I do this too, and there is a reason for it. Sometimes the rolls aren't fake! I don't use Passive perception, but if I asked the players to make Perception rolls, they'd know there was a reason to stop and inspect the area, so instead I continually make the checks myself. If there's nothing to check for, I still roll sometimes as a red herring. Also I may be indecisive about what a monster intends to do, and I'm rolling to break the log jam on what is a 50/50 decision in my mind.

[@camwyn256]

​@mal2ksc yup. And sometimes when you're rolling a red herring, it'll come up a 1 or a 20 and then you may decide to alter something based off that luck.

[@SupersaiyanSlytherin]

Railroading or actively attempting to ‘defeat the party’ “The point of the game is not to ‘win’” applies to DMs too…

[@chukyuniqul]

Railroading can be useful to point everyone back in the right direction if they're floundering about, but it's a bad habit that sometimes replaces stopping the game to ask "do you want to play this campaign that you signed up for or not?" because you have endless stories of players going against the DM's clear intentions for the stuff they prepares because "nuh-uh you won't railroad me". There is a story, you know. As for actively defeating the party, I do that for my lancer combat encounters. I give myself a setup and then play it as essentially the party's opposition. They got quite vicious (hacking an autonomous drone that was nearly overheating to push it into overdrive then using a trait which makes them take turns at the same time to make it walk up to the party and blow up it was, I think, a sobering moment for them) but the party still pushed through. It's fun. And more importantly, rewarding for the players. I may not want them to lose, but when fighting I'm playing a side that wants to win and will do so.

[@rainingtacos7529]

Does having smart enemies count as trying to win? Like a goblin focusing their fire on the wizard after he casts fireball killing 3 of them.

[@chukyuniqul]

@@rainingtacos7529 I mean to a degree, yeah. But goblins won't throw their lives away (no one will, when they're smart) so they'll rather retreat and use cover to pelt the wizard with arrows, so the melee need to move in on them to flush them out like an angry, reusable grenade. Smart enemies ain't fight to the death. Think of that one comic of the shepherd dog talking off some coyotes from attacking the herd. For all intents and purposes the coyotes are chaotic evil, and there's the chance of having characters that plain have no regards for their safety, but mixing both recklessness and awareness is a combination that should be saved for setpiece encounters like bossfights. A key piece of advice I can give you is to try to be aware of what your players are expecting and try to be careful about subverting it. If their expectations are reasonable, do not subvert them if it leads to a dangerous disordering of plans. Only ever throw a wrench in their plans when the outcome is salvageable by them.

[@rainingtacos7529]

@@chukyuniqul Thanks! As an aspiring DM, I want to make encounters more than just "enemies run in mindlessly and try to kill". Maybe it's the wrong mindset, but I want to think carefully of what to do and strategize like the players do. Not to win, don't misunderstand, but because I just like the combat. The games I play give the players max health so I have some cushioning if I follow the same ruleset. Thanks again for the advice.

[@chukyuniqul]

@@rainingtacos7529 Nah, don't worry I get it. It's the same thing I do for Lancer and why I'm so happy to play the system because it's genuinely like a many v 1 boardgame. Pathfinder is even better about this (and take this as a suggestion to look at its encounter building system for an idea of how good you can have it) because it literally lets you budget your encounters. To put it VERY simply, depending on the severity of the encounter you have an XP budget that you fill up by adding monsters, and their XP granted is scaled to the players' level, so a monster at their same level, for a party of 4 gives 25xp with a "standard" (i.e. one of many before a full heal) encounter being 100xp. Also, pathfinder uses a flat amount for levelling, so 10 standard encounters will always mean a level up (though you can speed the campaign progression up or down by lowering or increasing the xp needed to level up).

[@michaelcreech8957]

I’m frequently guilty of “do you want to do anything” not for lack of setting the scene but because my party occasionally seems to become possessed by gold fish and just forget they walked into a new room with several things to inspect/interact with

[@inukithesavage828]

Worst player behaviour: not listening, not asking questions, and expecting the DM to spoonfeed them the solution to everything.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in. That smug look on their face when I fall for their trap card.

[@jettblade]

The obvious one where the DM tells you what your character is thinking or how they'd react to a given situation. Had this one game, not DnD, where elves and dwarves were extremely aggressive to each other to the point they will not work with each other and may attack each other on sight. We weren't told this when he talked about the world and it really screwed us because most of the party were elves and we were supposed to talk to a dwarf about a job. We nearly killed our would-be employer because our pacifist Cleric failed a self-control check. The character had the pacifist flaw meaning they literally couldn't start a fight except in this 'special' case. They also almost permanently losing her connection to her god because of that fight. The DM backed off of that after that player basically walked out. Another one that is a little bit minor is a DM that doesn't write any changes they rule on. Had too many times where they made a ruling way one week but the next it works a completely different way. Just be consistent with rulings and write things down.

[@zambekiller]

Apparently I don't put enough combat into my campaigns when in reality I have told them many times to look at the bounty boards if they don't want to do random NPC fetch quests

[@azurewraith2585]

This might sound odd but one of my big gripes is false stakes. nothing kills my desire to play more than having every possible consequence of the party’s actions be solved for us.

[@robertsilvermyst7325]

Making something that is so complicated that you just mentally check out and lose interest.

[@leonelegender]

Skill issue

[@Mgtowhonesty]

imposing penalties based on their interpretation of how an action goes. i had a DM tell me i failed a social combat because they changed the way i blew smoke away from my face and it made me look worse to the monster.

[@leonelegender]

Shouldn't be smoking to begin with

[@Mgtowhonesty]

@@leonelegender it was a demon made of smoke. It was trying to intimidate me by filling the room with smoke. I wanted to just blow the smoke away from my face but the DM ruled it as if i were doing so out of panic instead of disrespecting it so i lost the encounter. Granted this was in new world of darkness so combats were a little different there hence why it may seem weird

[@viktorbazina]

​@leonelegender In game. Also it may have been required for the encounter. Also the monster/area may just be smoky.

[@generalcollie2530]

I feel like that COULD be a great mechanic, though, as long as you keep consistent and also add bonuses if an interpretation of an action is rather positive. Personally, I like giving my players situational bonuses and penalties from time to time.

[@Mgtowhonesty]

@@generalcollie2530 the issue arose when the dm changed the way the action was done to impose a penalty. The dm shouldnt chime in to make one seem weak so they can peanlize that weakness

[@snowjohnson8095]

Something i hate is that when players speak over me they ignore me

[@mcspooky8180]

i had a dm once who would never let us win fights. every fight was against a level 18 character who would just kick our asses then a "Beautiful and lovely" elf women wpuld come and save us, twll us we are weak and leave

[@Gaiacrusher9fan2]

The part about putting plot progression behind a skill check reminds me of a story previously read on this channel. Those who have been here will probably remember "IT'S ON MY FUCKING MANTLE!"

[@spicylightbulbs928]

The only times my DM introduces NPCs to the party is when we make a point to try and get them to join, he had to ban it after our bard married one of his bosses and had her permanently join the party

[@Tomha]

One thing 2 of my previous DMs did is that they say/permit something, but then realize "Oh wait, this can backfire." So instead of just saying "Hey, on second thought, this might be a bad idea. I think we should undo this." they instead go out of their way to sandbag you so you can't do it anyway. The first example was a Necromancer build I was doing, the DM said "Knock yourself out." cause I told him how my guy was a "Quality over Quantity" type of necromancer and would only have 1-3 undead at a time. This was 3.5 mind you so it was plausible to have good undead henchmen. Well the DM saw my sheet and I think freaked when he saw how every undead I personally animate got +8 STR, +4 DEX, +5 HP per HD, 1d6 cold damager per nat attack, +4 Turn Resistance. I think the DM realized how disastrous that can be if I got my hand on monsters so he made sure we only ever fought humans, or the monster bodies would be so destroyed, that they were useless. Although he DID say I could mix and match bones for stronger undead, he also made sure the dead monsters had nothing salvageable. We did eventually kill a Giant and I thought "Oh awesome! Giant Skeleton pet! I could build a base in his ribcage!" but he was too durable for me to animate, for now. And everyone refused to help me drag his body around until I could. The Second was for 5e, the DM was doing his first campaign for the group and wanted everyone to start lvl 20. He had a rule for his Artificers "If you know what ingredients are needed, you can make it." and he really needed a healer, so I said I'd be willing to play an Alchemist and help keep the party alive. I wanted to experiment and make this class seem good. Since I was an Alchemist, I had a sensible idea: Explosives. The DM said you can build Nukes if you knew the ingredients. Well, I dunno that off the top of my head, but I knew how to make gunpowder. So I told me DM that before we start the campaign, I want to spend 100 Platinum of my guys 500 on crafting material for explosives. I needed fuses, plastic, sulfer, charcoal, saltpeter. As well as a plentiful supply of Acid, Alchemist Fire, Bags, glass vials, oil. "And hey, how would you rule the Glyph of Warding if I wanted to apply a Acid or Fire effect into bullets in a loaded revolver? Technically I'm casting the spell on the bullets inside a revolver, but the bullets aren't moving out of said revolver." He said no to the Glyph idea real quick, but as for everything else, he said no because we already left town...while I was making the character! So despite saying I can make stuff if I know how, he not only forced me to not do anything during Character Creation, and everywhere we went to conveniently had no supplies, I couldn't even restock my alchemy supplies at city capitals! Man, why do they have to get your hopes up to do something awesome?

[@nabra97]

I had a situation when the GM said "you already leaved the town" to as trying to ask the questgiver NPC for details on our mission. Apparently, we had to text him before the game, and we should have known that without him telling it to us ("you should have known that" to most random stuff - including rules of his homebrew system that aren't written anywhere - was the general topic of that game)

[@Tomha]

@@nabra97 Geez, that sucks. I honestly haven't had chance to DM often enough to have any real homebrew rules. The only one I really have is "We're having a Session Zero" and "If you wanna use 3rd party books, you gotta be willing to share them."

[@nabra97]

@@Tomha it wasn't even homebrewed rules, he made a system from scratch (that he explained as "just like FATE", but the only way it was similar to FATE was supposedly being narrative; I'm not actually sure it existed and he didn't make it up on the fly), and he said he would explain rules as we go, but then expected us to somehow know them

[@iampfaff]

Maybe try not to be such a munchkin power gamer and take every single thing he says literally and to the literal extreme... Seems like you’re the problem buddy. Why are problem players never self-aware? Nobody except you has fun when you’re trying to break the game.

[@Tomha]

@iampfaff Oh, so somehow, I'm the bad guy because the DM says "I'm allowed to make an atomic bomb if I know the real life ingredients." And I just so happen to know how to brew mustard gas and gunpowder?

[@Quadraxis]

One of the gripes I had with an old DM was that he thought crits were too powerful, so he changed it to "threat of crit"; whenever you scored a natural 20, you rolled the attack again. Only if you beat the AC again did you get a crit. Of course, this was not the case for natural 1s nor if the monsters critted.

[@Medul759]

In NOT-5e this is true, that's actually how Pathfinder crits work because they break faces. Real dumb to put in 5e though.

[@Sarkhan69]

@@Medul759 you could have just said "before 5e".

[@samzilla1281]

About the only one I can think of is a DM that wanted to use the 'gritty' alternate rules. Long rest was a week. Short rest was 24 hours. I hated it. I only played one session under that DM.

[@archmagemc3561]

That can work... if the DM doesn't rush the story and removes all points of rushing and timing from a module. But most DMs don't make those appropriate changes so yeah it sucks pretty hard.

[@algotkristoffersson15]

@@archmagemc3561if your gonna alter the story just make your own story instead of using a module. Also if you make time irrelevant to allow players to long rest after each fight. The longer rests homebrew rule becomes meaningless. The whole point of the rule is for players to NOT long rest after every fight.

[@leonelegender]

Sounds like you are a loser

[@TastyFlanPudding]

I absolutely despise gritty rules campaigns. I also left pretty much immediately.

[@Allantitan]

@@algotkristoffersson15which also makes certain class features like spell casting useless unless your a class that gets it back on a short rest

[@lucifersatan8240]

In the first session of my campaign I had to do something that made me disgusted with myself. The major inciting incident of the campaign was going to be an ancient necromancer and a powerful abjurer fighting over a misunderstanding, resulting in the abjurers death. This was the only part of my entire story that HAD to play out a certain way, and a player figured out the identity of each, their motivations, and I had to send the killing death spell early and it was still ON THE SAME TURN that the player cleared up the misunderstanding. He was MOMENTS from avoiding the entire campaign and I really feel like I forced him down a path/negated the impact of his decision. He didn't even notice that but I feel kind of guilty.

[@leonelegender]

You truly are the worst human being in the world

[@rorybutler7961]

Don’t listen to the other commenter, you did nothing wrong. In an ideal world, players would have full agency, but most dm’s will only have the time and energy to come up with one plot. It wouldn’t have been satisfying for your players if you had to cancel the session and think up of a new story. You were perfectly right to bend the rules a little to give your players the best experience.

[@KamuiSeph]

Cutting fights too short after a good hype build up. Man nothing sucks more than going all out, using a bunch of once per day and long rest abilities, multiple spell slots, only for the monster to just fall over and die after a huge intro... I DM plenty and if it looks like my players are enjoying the fight, actively communicating with each other, thinking of strategies and someone gets a lucky crit, im adding some hp to the mob. Rule of cool, man. Too many dms are just slaves to the stat block...

[@megaplays2748]

I actually do the whole "let players control NPCs" thing all the time. My first campaign had an NPC invited to join the party, and despite me not wanting to play as her in combat because I didn't want to have to control another character if I didn't want to, that character would have said yes. So I asked the player whose character is close to said NPC if he would control her in combat and he agreed. My second campaign had several NPCs permanently or temporarily ally with the party and I had the players control them as well, especially if their PCs weren't in that fight (for plot reasons, the party was split several times). That way, each player was still engaging in the session even if their character wasn't present.

[@Derginator]

While shopping: “this blacksmith has weapons not armor” Oh cool now I’ll just sit her while the rest of the party haggle with this guy for an hour. Then we go to another blacksmith and everyone is like “we just went to one”

[@Sarkhan69]

huh? that's hardly a problem. not uncommon actually for that to be 2 different stores. it does not take an hour to haggle. dm says the price, pc attempts persuasion to haggle, done in a minute. it's literally no difference in time to roleplay it as one store or 2. either way it's the same process of talking to someone across a table.

[@randus7053]

Ah, so this is why there is the optional rule of degrees of failure. Basically the premise for it is that given enough in game time the party will figure out the solution so the check determines how quickly the task is accomplished.

[@algotkristoffersson15]

Well that only makes sense for ones based on mental stats.

[@StarKnight619]

As both a player and DM I feel these. that being said, my players hate me whenever we play because I dont use rolls for ability scores I use pre-created list or point-buy. Many of them DESPISE it because it makes them feel weak, when in reality they are the ones that make completely OP characters. An Example of this is when I started a Star Wars Saga Campaign and one player whined and cried until I gave in (yes my fault and I was stupid moving on) he was able to take down a AT-ST to almost half health, they have 120 HP with 10 Damage Reduction, .....with their fist and then had the balls to tell me that it wasnt OP. Recently I have a new group that has started a mostly themed Undead Campaign. There is a WIDE verity of race and class in this small 3 party strong group, so I took it upon myself to make a DMNPC (hold the torches and pitchforks please, let me finish), the character is all but attached to one of the players and is a pure Cleric, that ties to the player. She is the same level as the party and is basically the party's in-combat healer while the Alchemist is out of combat healer. As a player I hate when I'm gaslighted and then have to spend the next hour or session long argument on HOW I wasnt told or given the information I was asking about. An example of this is that I rolled a 30 on Gather Information with an added +5 because I wasnt trying to look suspicious and wanted to take my time, then another +5 bonus because the guild I worked for was a major player, so a 40. Even the GODS would tell you things with that, the DM basically told me I wasted the day and didnt find anything not a SINGLE clue. Town wasnt affected by magic or divine, hell it wasnt even effect by greed because the King cared for the people. We were hired BY THE KING to find a murderer and was given complete authority. It was so frustrating when the DM told us we didnt find anything and people still died. We left shortly after.

[@Elheru42]

This is only a minor thing, but we have to roll for perception all the time. We are sitting in a tavern talking. "Everyone, roll a perception check". 1 character rolls high, the rest roll mid or low. "Okay, just you then. You notice a dragonborn enter the tavern". Okay cool, what am I meant to do about that. Im not given any context so I just ignore it. Then the dm is waiting for us to do something about the dragonborn who entered. None of the other players can do anything with this information because they are unable to notice someone walk into a room. Eventually someone will say "Have I noticed the dragonborn yet". To which the dm will say "After a minute or so everyone else notices". What was the point of that perception roll? 1 player had an extra minute to notice something that wasnt important?

[@QuixoteBadger]

OOOH... That dice rolling one really burned my beans. Cutting a rope? I would count that as a bonus action. Vaulting over a half-wall? Spend an extra 5ft of movement unless a relevant stat or proficiency is a +2 or higher. YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO ROLL FOR THOSE THINGS! ESPECIALLY OUT OF COMBAT!

[@SmarkAngel]

Hmm. I think you make a good point. It's well argued. You present good examples of a similar quality...but I'm not sure you've convinced me. Can you roll persuasion for me? :-p

[@QuixoteBadger]

@@SmarkAngel Ughhh... **Rolls** Let's see.. **mumbling**. Dirty 21. I actually rolled for this. I nearly pooped! XD

[@SmarkAngel]

@@QuixoteBadger ha!

[@darkjackl999]

14:20 basically happened to me My *FIRST* session joining an online west marches group, first and foremost the dm let his friend play a clearly imba ironman warlock homebrew which i didn't like because of the character restrictions for everyone else Said warlock cast scorching ray at one point and *1* roll was a 1, so dm decided all 3 were now going at me (the only new player btw) Suffice it to say i gave that group exactly 2 sessions, realized he was a bad gm n quit (there was also some 'office politics' level shit the head dm forced on every group to basically bully one particular guy that absolutely pissed me off) as well as several other minor things that just fully solidified my new stance of: no dnd > bad dnd Honestly in hindsight i wonder if he was trying to scare me off cause he was GIGA simping for the girl in the group

[@brunosilva5652]

O don’t have much issue with anything narratively as I think all games have the proper player. As for mechanically I have 2 things, first is undermining a character’s ability, this ranges from never dealing a damage type a character resist to actually not giving them the situation to use their ability, punch the tanks, let the bard perform on the tavern, the players want to live a fantasy when they chose a feature. Problem 2 is tight to 1, homebrewing rules without letting the players know it. I had a game once that I built a crit fisher just to have the DM note that critical hits worked differently on they’re setting just after I hit my first crit

[@LordBoZman]

Had a DM I like come to me like hey, I need to steal back this Very Rare Arcane Grimoire item you shouldn't have gotten so early. I said that's fine I'll accept that(I was level 5-6 with a +3 Arcane Grimoire cause we were sneaky and pitted two high level bad guys against one another and escaped afterwards so I was level 6 with a DC 18). But that fight right before it. He threw at us Helmeted Horrors, which have 3 spell immunities, two of the three were the examples, Fireball, Heat Metal, but replacing lightning bolt with Rim's Binding Ice. I was a bladesinging wizard who only just got 3rd level spells, and got Fireball, and one of my bread and butter spells was Rim's Binding Ice. So the majority of the session was me getting to feel useless and then got a lvl 20 Wizard's spellbook stolen back away from me. I didn't have time to copy really anything from it, we never were in any place where I could get the supplies, other than to copy 1 spell, Counterspell. That's it, that's all I could afford. Then after that I got 1200 gold worth of spell copying materials *after* I lost the book. Ughh

[@leonelegender]

Sadge

[@Phoenixoflife56]

3:04 thankfully my brother is isn’t this bad but he does have moments where he either forgets to mention key information or miscommunication ensues because he forgets to take into account his players actions or out of table shenanigans happen

[@instantcharlie1225]

I'm the DM for an OSR game: I'm of the firm belief that you only ask a player to roll skills if there's a chance their character couldn't do something. For example: a cleric trying to remember some lore about an obscure god featured in an ancient tomb (info that may be useful but not necessary); a fighter trying to pull a rusted lever to give the party the easiest (but not the only) way to the next part of a dungeon; a magic-user being able to recognize what kind of magic is being used on an item/ in a trap/ etc; practically all of the thief's skills are supposed to be skill checks, but I think only certain situations call for checks (mostly just anything that is time-sensitive: traps about to trigger, enemies nearby, potential guards in the area, etc). If it is reasonable to assume the character can do something: they should. Like a cleric knowing lore about their deity; a fighter being able to break down a rickety door; a magic-user recognizing the runes for a spell they know; the thief being able to pick any (non-magical/unbroken) lock in a room with no immediate danger or loot a body completely for hidden items. With that being said: the players have to TELL ME what they're doing; nothing is assumed.

[@mal2ksc]

Sometimes it's fine to have them roll for something they can't fail, just to see _how well_ they do.

[@Jakethayne]

The issue with punishing murder hobos is when 1 it’s the whole party so they have the argument that your “attacking them for their fun” and 2 if it’s just one guy, they’ll feel more singled out and could leave. What you should do is have a talk with the group or the individual, let them know that this was not the campaign you had in mind and you ask that they tone it down. Obviously not every scenario will pan out this way. And some times people just want to do this because they’re annoying or like the attention. But It’s a much better idea to try and work out the problem rather then solve the problem in game. It can feel much more personal to have you describe how badly punished they are to their faces. But tbf just putting up more resistance has its merits. If the party just finds that killing people is a faster solution and that’s the only reason they do it. Struggling might make them more averse to the decision

[@ciarangale4738]

I completely disagree, because the "talk" is basically saying. I want you to play MY WAY. by comparison, having logical in-game consequences to stop the murder-hoboing from being fun causes people to find other fun things to do

[@Jakethayne]

@@ciarangale4738 I understand your point. I believe having your fun explained to you as, not fun for others can come off as, “you must play my way” but I think it’s possible to convince others that it’s better that way. You’re not wrong it is “my way” but the point is that, the murder hobo way is disruptive to the flow/fun of at least you if not others game. And the whole point of the game is to have fun. if one person isn’t having fun at the expense of others that should be brought up. You can implement realistic consequences that will definitely suggest they don’t try to have fun that way. You can even be harsh about it, which works on a lot of people. Except obstinate people who think they’re playing against the DM instead of with them. But my point is communication is really important, no matter how well you know the person. And it has a lower chance of hurting certain people’s feelings. Like people who don’t handle failure well, or just might take it as you attacking them.

[@flamenami]

@@ciarangale4738 I’m sorry, but this is one of the worst dnd takes I’ve ever read. Communication is the most importantly skill in dnd, and refusing to talk to someone out of game for the sake of player freedom is only going to lead to problems.

[@ciarangale4738]

@flamenami my point was that saying "hey, the way youre having fun isnt the way i want you to have fun" isnt as fun for anyone as "is this still fun when it has consequences?"

[@TheCoffeehound]

@@ciarangale4738 If your idea of fun and the DM's idea of fun are that wildly different, then one of you is at the wrong table.

[@Akira-ss6cm]

We had a dm in a Westmarch who played as Lolth who strung our Drow pc to her bidding, who was in truth an aranae. After months of planning with her partner, they decided the only way to unbind herself from Lolth was by reincarnating as a whole other race with the aid of a druid. We down her, go through the traumatic process of the wait, and rolled on the expanded updated reincarnation table. She rolled... A Drow. Barely a 1% chance of it happening. The players celebrated an almost Pinocchio like transformation, it was so poetic. Then our dm said 'Roll a d2. 1 for Lolth-sworn, 2 for other.' They rolled a 1. This was a text based session so true emotions were hidden, but everyone else I checked in the room was angered by this. Months of work and tense emotions that a dm decided to side step because he played baldur's gate 3 and thought it would be cool for your blood to decide who you are, not your actions. Random dm fiat ruining what was supposed to be a triumphant moment of freedom. To his credit, since it was a d20 after the d100 that determined the sub race of elf, her partner, a sorcerer, decided to try to use magical guidance to reroll the d20, and got wood elf instead. It's a compromise sure, but the damage had already been done. And none of us really saw that dm the same way again.

[@leonelegender]

Based dm. Evil races are evil

[@Gallacant]

I mean the dice give and they take, but dam

[@halodude7167]

7:48 what the fuck is a passive athletics? As far as I was aware, only perception, investigation and insight got that treatment.

[@leonelegender]

Probably something from other editions

[@hurricanemarigolds2818]

I've never heard of someone using passive athletics until this video, but you can calculate the passive version of any skill very easily, its just 10 + the number you have for that skill. So if you have a +7 in athletics, the passive version would be 17.

[@xerneasgirlpkmn1433]

My DM added in too many DMPCs and characters from apparently another campaign into our originally small party of 3. The first one was meant to be added in as a guide but eventually it felt like it was getting main character treatment. The story started to revolve around him and his past. It didn’t help that we were using the Kids on Bikes system to find a way to combine Pokemon and Digimon so it was experimental and the rules were constantly changing. The only times I had true fun was during the two gym battles our group had and it was solo sessions so I wasn’t scared to speak up. I had scheduled a call for my dm about my grievances and I said I’d bring an emotional support human, one of my close friends who also is playing in the game, because I can get a nervous wreak and my DM didn’t like that I was going to bring someone into our conversation and brought one of the other players in to be on their side. I felt pressured because of that and I could get the wording right on what I wanted to say. I was told i’d get one more chance for the game because it felt like i was loosing interest since i’d be quiet but ofc i’d be quiet. You expect my character to be their normal self after having their fear come true in two separate fights practically one right after the other not being able to help their friends. After I listed my grievance of the too many DMPCs and NPCs turned PCs (all played either by the DM or our friend that they brought into the convo) and me being confused as to who was talking because they all sounded the same I was told that I was being kicked out of the campaign. We were just over 20 sessions in and I was attached to my character greatly. It really hurt to hear the DM say that because not only did I commission art for my character, I also commissioned art for our other friend’s character they were playing as and in the beginning of the campaign I was told to expand more upon my backstory and so I did adding as much as my dumb brain could think of with a sprinkle of irl personal trauma, because what else are you going to do, and I was so proud of what I had written for it. To see that in the end it was all for naught sucks but now I don’t feel stress on days we were meant to have the session

[@leonelegender]

You went too hard

[@BarrakDraconis]

1. Fudging mechanics at the players' expense, to negate an "inconvenient" strategy. Party was fighting a mindless golem. I'm an artificer with a high AC that can impose disadvantage on a target's attacks. So I was tanking in melee. After two rounds, the golem moves around me and successfully grapples a squishier target, mysteriously ignoring the disadvantage it has. It was then impossible to break that grapple. Forced movement is supposed to break grapples. Any attempt to shove the golem caused it to bring its grappled target along. Any attempt to shove the grapple target suddenly required a strength-based check, including spell effects where that made no sense whatsoever. 2. Denying critical information that would be inconvenient to the narrative (or to torturing the players). This isn't just about the unfair split between "Your character wouldn't know that" and "I don't care if your character has an INT of 20, if you can't figure this out, neither can they", it's about negating all skills, spells, and other means of gaining information when the GM's puzzle is based on Moon Logic from a specific book series that nobody else has read. It's about rolling over 30 on an INT-based check for information, and being told only what everyone already knew. Thanks. Really glad I invested in the specific lore skill that should be helping here. 3. Critical fumble tables. I've already failed what I was rolling to do, what more do you want from me? Oh, for my armor to explode off my body into a jillion pieces, and for my weapon to fly off into another dimension, never to be seen again. Perfect. Whether it's kicking a player while they're down, or adding injury to injury, these are always crippling. And making the monsters roll on fumble tables too, doesn't balance them! Any increase in randomness is by definition weighted against the players, because while the monsters only have to worry about the single encounter they appear in, players have to survive EVERY encounter.

[@Gallacant]

Grappling isn't based on an attack roll, it's a check. But otherwise yeah it's bs

[@BarrakDraconis]

@@Gallacant It was an Improved Grab grapple, so it landed an attack despite disadvantage and then grappled for free afterward.

[@Nudhul]

Critical fumbles i feel like would work well on checks being done in especially hazardous circumstamces. Like say you're trying to maintain your balance on difficult terrain. In a muddy bog if you role a 1 you just fall over because there's nothing too dangerous about mud. If you role a 1 on ice you might fall and twist your ankle or concuss yourself, imposing disadvantage on appropriate checks going forward.

[@BarrakDraconis]

@@Nudhul But why, though? Every roll, in the game, always, has a 5% chance of being a 1. Which, chances are, is going to be a failure anyway. Why add injury to injury for something that the player has literally no control over?

[@Nudhul]

@@BarrakDraconis Because that's the nature of chance and risk. Besides, a good DM will offer ways to avoid the risky route with one that's safer but carries some other drawback. A PC might also purchase hobnailed boots or crampons to eliminate the risk.

[@TheDenshProblem]

Rolling too often and on trivial things is something I've also experienced. Most commonly I've found that during sneaky sections everyone was rolling stealth each time we wanted to stealth-move anywhere. That's a lot of rolling. Someone is going to fail eventually and that's all it takes to trigger combat.

[@derrickhaggard]

This is something that I actually have dealt with as a player and that is DMs who pretty much throw me and the party into a no-win combat situation/TPK combat situation that ends the campaign with the BBEG winning out of nowhere with no foreshadowing or warning during the plot that this was the intended outcome just for the sake of killing our characters in gruesome ways for shock value that doesn't further the story who then gets mad and throws a temper tantrum at me and the other players when we state that if he/she was going to pull this dark twist ending at least via the plot foreshadow it or give us warning that we weren't going to win or survive via the plot instead of letting us throughout the campaign think that we were going to win in the end and stop the BBEG.

[@Sarkhan69]

use punctuation to separate sentences.

[@bonedude756]

Recently I've stolen a rule from apocalypse world when it comes to DCs, and honestly it's great. I set higher DCs then one would normally. Not crazy, just a few points higher then what you'd expect. If the player rolls at least Half that DC, the roll becomes a Half success. Fail forward has always been a concept, but I feel like the partial success gets me thinking about the situation more, and it still allows for the risk of actual failure. Let's say a rogue rolls half success on lock picking. They get it open, but the lock makes a lot more noise then they were expecting, and it seems that it caught the attention of the guards. Another Example is that a Half Success on a charisma check might convince who they were trying to talk to, but make someone else suspicious of them. The player now has another decision to make, and it makes the story more interesting. I also feel like spitting up DCs like this makes for less "Save or die" moments.

[@Menno_3]

Use a critical fail table. Or a 'naughty list' - made a bad joke during a rp moment and therefore my race was changed.

[@legendnodensetsu8423]

Having a critical miss table. I get that it's supposed to be funny, I guess, but this creates an imbalance between martial classes and casters. One can lose their weapon, slash themselves or slash an ally, but the other isn't rolling for attack, they mostly impose a DC check to enemies.

[@pcalix17]

Time scaling. I suck at it to this day even after years of DMing. The only solutions I've come up with are either having the party separate close by so there aren't as many time scale issues or never splitting the party at all. The newest solution since I play DND online is to have a Discord RP area so, during downtime, each player can progress their own stories at their own pace.

[@ChuckUFarley90]

I had another DM more recently. His world had some fuckery going on with it. Tiamat, Goddess of all evil dragons, was in charge of the world. Anyone or anything involving Good-Aligned Deities or the Upper Planes was closed off and denied to us. Restrictions were put on character creation as a consequence. Enter my character. She's a Warlock, and her Patron isn't a Divine entity, so she should be mostly unaffected by all that nonsense. I give him the backstory. Nothing that would interfere with his world or interact with the Divine. "Can I make some tweaks?" he asks. "As long as her Patron remains honest to its promises, I'll be okay with that." He agrees that my Patron will remain honest with its promises. Then, in a later session, it came out that he changed out who my Patron was. "WHAT THE HELL? I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD DO THAT!" "You said as long as your Patron remained honest, I could make changes." "YOU DIDN'T SAY YOU'D CHANGE MY PATRON COMPLETELY!" "You never asked." Then I left.

[@itskitt3237]

That’s a yikes. As a forever dm, I believe that a dm should never be the one to make changes to a player’s backstory. I can ask my players to change something to fit the world, but I’d never go in and do it myself unless a player were to directly ask me to do so. As DMs, we are literally every single character that isn’t a PC while players get ONE; we need to let them have that character in the way they want to.

[@SageTigerStar]

My personal hatred is when DM's have that "DM vs Player" mentality. I understand it can be fun to test out what you can do with your players, but if it's not fun, then what are we doing at the table? (this can also be a problem reversed, Player Vs DM mentality, but that's not what the vid is about lol)

[@QuillStroke]

DM vs Player is so toxic, it can end up making a player feel singled out of it's aimed at one player.

[@SageTigerStar]

@@QuillStroke my last DM was so focused on both spoiling a player with all the gear and magic items he could ever want, but also wanted to see if he could "break" an Overpowered min-maxed character, and the rest of our party suffered for it. Everything the DM tossed at us was basically immune to anything the rest of the party could do, while the Rogue was the only one eating well with damage numbers and loot. Short of just causing a TPK, the DM was throwing everything he could think of at the Rogue but nothing was working, however, it did kill our Wizard, Paladin, and Cleric in the process. Pretty bad experience.

[@leonelegender]

​@@QuillStrokegood, let them feel the hate

[@leonelegender]

Dm is supposed to be indifferent. Monsters are fighting to kill

[@SageTigerStar]

@@leonelegender I think the word you're looking for is "Impartial". However, it's still a game. If the DM is going out of their way to throw things at the party that they know will kill them with little or no chance of the party winning the encounter, it's bad design.

[@criminalmatrix6]

Checks outside of combat really should only be used if there is a significant chance of failure or a condition for failure. If you need a check to continue a story, then there's always an option of failing forward. They lose the person they're chasing or they arrive at the scene too late, someone looted the treasure but the plot progresses either way with a positive or negative outcome.

[@Sarkhan69]

"only be used if there is a significant chance of failure". are you sure this means what you think it means?

[@Her_Imperious_Condescension]

11:45 I'll repeat the best bit of GM advice I've ever heard: _"Never_ let someone roll for something you're not prepared for them to fail. If they need to find a thing to progress, just let them find the thing." -Johnny Chiodini

[@jeffcena9577]

Sometimes, I ask the skill roles to tell me HOW they find the necessary information. Failing up made the best moments. The party was trying to sneak on this harbored ship in a restricted area. Fighter in big ol clunky armor nat 1 on a stealth climbing down a ladder. The guards were convinced the ship was haunted and ran out screaming.

[@marshallrobinson1019]

As a DM, the first thing I do whenever a player fails a routine skill check is remind them (and the other players) the "Help" action exists. My current party has a barbarian with a musician origin feat (2 free rerolls after a long rest). If they can't meet the DC then they'll need to find another way to progress the story. Failure and consequences should always be an option. If they figure out an alternative solution, then they can have it.

[@greythreat]

I don't use them anymore, because I'm lazy, but my players always enjoyed when I used fumble tables. When a 1 was rolled all the other players would get excited and try to guess how it would go wrong. This is something I would require every player to be on board with it though.

[@king_ant64]

ive been a dm for a year now and ive always used critical hit and fumble table so to each their own my players never had a problem

[@wolfskinchanger]

Ask a question with no context behind it. I was a new player to the Cypher system, joining a group that had been together for about six months at that point. In-story, my character had just woken up after six months of medically-induced sleep, and after establishing the setting that my character had woken up in, the DM asked me what my skills were. It's important to note that Cypher's rules are fairly open-ended; any skill you can argue using in a given situation, you can roll it. It took five or ten minutes of general confusion for this to be revealed as the reason for the above question. My character wasn't in the same place as what he last remembered, he suddenly had superpowers, and on top of everything else he was face-to-face with a demon (a friendly and very chill demon, but still); the DM wanted to know what skills I had so he could advise me on what skill I might roll to have my character avoid a panic attack. If you had led with that, honey, the *player* might've avoided a panic attack.

[@salem-salem4426]

I give DMPC because it helps a LOT for some stuff (more exposition, answering questions), but in battle they're like a lair action for players. I call it team action or whatever. Basically, fighter NPCs get a list of actions they can do each turn with points/point cost. Players know the list. At initiative 0 (after everyone played in practice) they will take a turn following players directives the best they can. If they don't receive any order, they do nothing and save their points.

[@rvpairofdicethewanderer2383]

Honestly, I have no issue with Skill Critical Successes and Skill Critical Failures, especially the latter. In my opinion, it realistically reflects completely unforseen circumstances and events that are truly beyond the Players' Control. For an example of a critical success, a very weak person tries to push tall rubble out of the way, only to realize he/she pushed onto a very delicate spot balancing the rubble blocking the way, causing the whole wall of rubble to collapse on its own. For an example of a critical failure, a very athletic person may try to pull himself/herself up a ledge and it would be easy for him/her but unfortunately, the bit of ledge that person grabbed was not stable and it snapped off the rest of the ledge, causing the person to fall. Most people may not like it, but I do, for the fact it resembles the reality that no matter how underprepared or underarmed someone is, they may truly have a stroke of luck, either by accidentally doing the correct actions or being accidentally assisted by outside forces, while a very prepared or armed person may still see failure, either caused by pure bad luck of a lack of perception and insight on the risks of certain situations.

[@Her_Imperious_Condescension]

Yeah, I love crit fails and crit successes, but it depends on the DM to not cheap out of it, and that's where the stigma comes from. A character being inexplicably bad at a thing they're really good at doesn't feel good for the player and is really lazy of the DM. But a Nat 1 triggering a new complication can make for some new opportunities.

[@Ma121Hunter]

Number 1 peeve is absolutely nerfing player classes. My first time playing dnd was in a homebrew setting. DM told us it would be "challenging", like, Dark Souls challenging, with a heavy emphasis on survival. Knowing this, we all chose our classes. When I joined there were only 3 left: ranger, bard, and cleric. I chose a half-elf ranger since it seemed like the perfect jack of all trades solution for no one else playing dedicated healer, and since I tend to play cautiously, I figured trying out ranger for the first time would be fun. Boy, was I wrong. The problem stemmed from spells like Good Berry and Healing Spirit. Apparently, he didn't like that I chose those spells, said it made the challenge of his game "too watered down" but since I was new, rather than outright ban me from having those spell, he nerfed them. Healing Spirits became a stationary spell, meaning when performed, the spirit was affixed to a specific point, meaning for you to heal you would also have to remain in that spot, making you an open target. Good Berry remained mostly unchanged, except now, if you ate more than one berry at a time, your character would "get the runs." I didn't learn THAT until a few sessions in. Being a retail worker, during the pandemic, I was often late to the game by an hour or two. My DM knew this when he accepted my place at the table, so i thought nothing of it. I found out later the DM had been explaining my absence from the party during those times as being stuck in some bush near by having eaten too many good berries. In the long run, it didn't matter, because we wound up getting party wiped about a year into the session and the DM basically took everyone but me and one other person to a different server to play. *shrug*

[@azzafromtazza7744]

My DM randomly decided that gelatinous cubes are conductive and will damage anything and anyone trapped inside of it when hit with a damaging spell. This was after two of my party members had gotten sucked into it and I had rolled a Nat 20 on a Guiding Bolt spell. This ended up dealing a fair amount of damage to the cube, but also knocking the two party members out cold. They survived, but my god it was stressful wondering if we’ll get them out before they permanently perished.

[@torgath5088]

DM nerfed my artificer's smithing

[@ericregis3912]

10:36 yeah, I was a culprit of hiding important information behind skillcheck. So, when everyone failed, I just pretended that the pearson with the highest role roled high enough to move the story along.

[@jeffcena9577]

Gentle railroading is okay. I like character backstories before I create the world because I can ensure I create a campaign that will tie into their interests and where they want the characters to go. If I get a player who doesn't care, I try to find what they like and give them an arc that lets them do the things they like doing. If someone likes to feel powerful, I'll get them an arc that allows them to feel powerful. And so on for each pillar of play.

[@tomcaniff6437]

write their entire campaign around their own NPCs instead of the players. and then just kinda drop the player characters into the story with no direction. never ends well, even if there is stuff to do, without a reason to do it, or an end goal outside of "have fun" it can get really lame, really fast, especially if the dm in question isn't super creative to begin with, you just end up trapped in a loop of finding a "new place", finding some dark secret about the "new place", and then burning it down or running away. without any interesting character moments or means to learn new information. the game devolves into a "everything is a bad guy and you are fucking lost" simulator. *where you run from the same monsters over and over again until you go insane* and to make it worse, every time you do uncover some secret, it's always some ridiculous background plot that involves NPCs we haven't even met yet, and that doesn't help us at all whatsoever. (I am also paranoid that I might become this) also when the dm doesn't ask me before adding stuff to my characters backstory which was perfectly fine as is, and what they added was the laziest "gotcha" twist ever that just ruins everything.

[@1997dartagnan]

On the DM PC thing, it’s okay to have NPC party members when you have a few players but want a larger, more well rounded party. Though, with a few caveats. I as the DM roleplay them, do the voice. Make them feel alive. You run them in combat. I also tend to build them to be helpful, but not show stealers (though, my players have argued I could probably give the kobold sorcerer fireball, but I refused because he was a support sorcerer.) As for magic items, I’ve only given one custom magic item to an NPC and it was, ironically, a nerfed flametounge though it was after the paladin NPC sacrificed himself and the platinum dragon hatchling blessed the sword he left behind. So for several months IRL, they just had this powerful sword no one could attune to and a painful reminder of their lost friend. And finally, the players worked together to get their paladin friend back, and every time he uses the full potential of that sword, the player rolling all those dice is always having a great time. Other than that, all my custom magic items have been for the PCs and compliment them in some way, or use resources that they had access to in new and interesting ways. As of right now, the party has… 4 npc party members (limited to 3 per combat because I don’t want one player needing to control 2 npcs and their own character) the disgraced paladin, the young elf warrior, the kobold sorcerer, and the platinum dragonling. Just give them funny voices, let your players control them, equip them(I do find it kinda funny because they usually get hand me down magic items the players either don’t want or have gotten something better) , and don’t make em too strong. Boom. Valued party member.

[@nathangerber1547]

I only use npcs when they make narrative sense. E.G. they are with a knight and some guards when they get hired by the knight to help him clear out the goblins. For other situations, I figured out that a cowardly npc is really good because he won't steal the limelight.

[@nathangerber1547]

Usually when I need to introduce a new PC, I have them be an additional adventurer that the npc hired to send with the party to do the quest he wanted done and come up with an excuse as to why they were hired later.

[@charlesrobbins5683]

I admit I’ve been guilty of hiding information behind skill checks, but I’ve started every time they get close but no cigar I lower the difficulty a little bit eventually they find it

[@xyzxyz4643]

Nat 1 on skill checks are absolutely valid. Hell you can be an acrobat and still trip, or maybe your hand does slip, maybe your detective gets distracted by something else and over looks something. Seriously we all fail menial stuff like drinking stuff without choking on it, or walking down the stairs. And so should characters?

[@awellner3285]

Just look at real life professions. Woodworkers for example, its the most experienced of them that lose fingers. They have already done this a 100 or a 1000 times, stuff like that makes you pay less attention which causes mistakes.

[@humanoid-ur3gf]

In a DND game my character has a carriage that has been modified so that you can have 3/4 cover when in it (the cover could be broken if aimed at as it was wood)and has enough room for all the characters to sleep with 2 animals so that we can switch them out,So my dm added a magic train (powered by magic and not coal/steam) that moves faster than the carriage, but wouldn't say how fast it moves just that it's faster then the carriage(we were also given a map of the place with no scale even when I asked ,I think this is related to the other because I could figure out one if given the other). Also added a country randomly and says it wasn't and that we didn't ask when it was an NPC that had started talking about it (all NPCs we had talked to said town or city not country when referring to the place)

[@Sarkhan69]

was there a point to this story?

[@humanoid-ur3gf]

@@Sarkhan69 kinda it was related to the video, stuff dms do that you hate, one being suddenly adding something that makes something that the character put effort and gold into useless or unusable, the other is having lore/plot important information that was never alluded to (different country/ countries tec level)and saying it is the players fault for not looking into the information

[@mal2ksc]

Don't do fumbles, do Rule of Funny! On a natural 1, the player has to explain their failure is a self-deprecating manner, and if they can make the DM laugh, they win Inspiration. They might also talk themselves into a minor penalty like falling prone, depending on how over-the-top the scene is, but it's worth it for Inspiration because we have lots of alternate ways Inspiration can be spent. For example, if all other party members are incapacitated, and you fail a saving throw for an effect that would also incapacitate _you,_ you can spend Inspiration as a Legendary Resistance. You don't re-roll, you just automatically succeed on that saving throw. This is known as the "last man standing" rule. If the character succeeds, whether by re-rolling or because a 1 is actually good enough (they never fail), then the Rule of Funny still applies but instead of failing, they should Clouseau (Peter Sellers' character in _The Pink Panther)_ their way into success.

[@CyclopsDragon]

If you thought critical fumble tables were annoying on their own, I once had a DM who would not only do critical fumbles, but would also make everyone, enemies included, roll a d20 for spells that don't normally require a d20, and then do extra things if there was a 1 or 20 rolled. Someone rolled a nat 1 on initiative? They fall prone. Someone rolled a natural 20 to save against a spell? Well, the caster rolled a nat 20 on his arbitrary spellcasting roll, so you need to make the save again. One time, when two characters made an arcana check to see if they knew how to get through a Prismatic Wall, one player rolled a nat 20 and the other rolled a nat 1. The character that got the 20 knew what all of the layers did and how to get through them. The character that got the 1 was then fed misinformation by the DM to essentially interfere with the other character getting through the layers, and was effectively told, "you are so certain of these answers that you'll do everything you can to make sure they're applied". That also bled over into telling players what their characters are doing. Really not a fun experience.

[@mini2239]

Most frustrating for me is a DM adding a major twist to a player's character arc without telling them about it. I get a DM might not want spoilers, but if it's going to send my character arc in a radically different direction, discuss it with me first. Don't dump a twist in my character's revenge fantasy by revealing their target was good all along without telling me first

[@randus7053]

Counterpoint the the DM should go the route of making the character claim they were good all along, then ask out of character if you the player want the character to actually be evil, thus allowing for options while respecting a player's wishes towards characters surrounding a backstory. But yes major twists without an 'out' should generally be frowned upon.

[@mini2239]

@@randus7053 that can work, but it can still leave me floundering when it comes to roleplay if I don’t know they’ll be out. It can put me on the back foot for roleplay, then again I'm relatively new to the game

[@leonelegender]

My biggest twist I do is that no character have any plan arc and the world will happen and respond you being there or not. You are not the mc

[@BlueTressym]

A lot of GMs vastly overrate the value of 'surprise' when it comes to things like that. Most of them mean well but misjudge it because they don't understand the player's intentions. Then you get the ones who only ever use family, friends etc. to screw over PCs. They're the creators of many an "I only make orphaned loners!" player.

[@thegreatandterrible4508]

This is a session 0 question for me. How much free reign do I have with your character's backstory. Luckily, most of my players trust me, and know I'm not going to fuck with anything fundamental to the concept they gave me.

[@camwyn256]

I gave my party what I called "party NPC". These are used to fill gaps and are, largely, controlled by the party. I will intervein if the players want to make the NPC do something completely out of character

[@Sn0w7ir3]

I have a dmpc that I run in my campaign and it’s mostly there because otherwise my two players might feel forced to be a cleric and I don’t want that, if they chose to then the character I play would indeed just be an npc but they didn’t so they are stuck with me. 5:27

[@novicebladesman2835]

Reminded about naturals in 5e, they do not happen on skill checks. If a DM says you automatically fail or succeed based on a 1 or 20, that is a common homebrew. Naturals only affect attack rolls. That being said, in pf2e, naturals do affect skill checks. They raise or lower your degree of success. This allows for players to get a natural 1 and still succeed if they get high enough on a roll, or at least not critically fail. Typically, those naturals should be a stroke of good or bad luck. Someone bumps into your rogue as they lockpick, the wall you are climbing turns out to have better handholds than you realized, etc.

[@Malkuth-Gaming]

DMs moving the goalpost. After defeating a villain, or saving a town or rescuing puppies. dont say " But wait! Theres more!" come one ffs give us a win sometimes!

[@carrotcake1418]

Every npc meet knows our entire backstories and are always 5 levels above us. Learned that quick on my bounty hunter rogue…while level 4

[@Vicramatic]

Fumble tables can be fun, just so long as everyone is okay with it, in the campaign that I am apart of one of the monsters rolled a one and we had a vote right there, the vote was a unanimous yes

[@ilovethelegend]

Something my DM used to do, which I'm fairly certain I've broken him of, is roll dice to decide how a scene that's happening off-screen that we can't interact with is going. Like... don't do that. It slows down proceedings, and since we can't interact with it, if things are going bad, then it's just stressing us out for no reason. Ah, man, fumble tables. The rule I heard was you line 10 first level fighters up and have them spend 10 minutes attacking a dummy every turn. If by the end of the ten minutes, half of the fighters are dead or dying, the DM MUST eat the critical fumble table.

[@Ducklesworth]

Im new to DMing and seeing the sad faces on players when i dont understand or get it just right hurt so bad

[@BogleyTheFriend]

I'm thinking of making a crit fumble rule for attacks and spells where if you roll a nat 1 you trip on the attack or receive blowback from the spell moving you 5 feet in a direction chosen by the player counting as forced movement. I feel that 1s should be significant just like 20s but they always miss on an attack rolls already. Buffing them slightly by making the fighter swing wide and stumble to safety could be cool. Or the warlock getting tossed left and right by a mini vortex or explosion on his eldritch blast could make what is a guaranteed miss into cool recovery or silly muckup depending on how the player flavours it makes a nat 1 much more interesting than "you fail." Also forcing players to move around with full agency is a good way to make combat more dynamic, standing still swinging a blade isn't as cool as dancing around someone

[@MitchellTF]

See what happens to people who violate rules of society IRL...then do that, if you have trouble with "What to do with murderhobos". Legal Eagle has ideas.

[@averagecontentenjoyer420-bw3mg]

Writing my backstory into the campaign without consulting me

[@mal2ksc]

I'd make it known up front that anything you provide prior to Session 0 and I accept as canon _is automatically part of the campaign._ If you have a "support NPC" you would be personally devastated to see harmed (like a parent, child, or spouse), DON'T put them in your backstory. Bring them in _after_ the world has been built.